February 15, 2009

This book was written by: Stephanie Jean Clement, PhD, author of several astrology books and the PSYCHIC POWERS REPORT for Oprah Winfrey. Dr. Clement’s "PhD in transpersonal psychology has prepared her to work with clients in defining their creative potential and refining their creative process”(interior page).

What is in this book: Techniques that “will help you to understand your personal vocation and also facilitate your work with others”(p.238). What is new about these techniques is that they have finally loosened the rigid, uncompromising formulas of astrology and offered a chance to be creative. Not many people realize that “astrology provides several potent methods for investigating creativity”(p.3), which can be more important that actually learning new things. “Human beings as a group already know enough—we have enough facts”(p.2). With the techniques in this book we can rearrange what we know. Creatively.

What is not in this book: Layman’s terms. This book is designed for readers who are familiar with basic astrological terms, so you’d better keep a straight face when you read about how "transits" from "Uranus will coincide with the entrance of individuals into one’s life who have profound emotional impact,” because the statement that “Uranus could signal a meeting which has continuing effects over many years”(p.162) is not talking about low-rise jeans or bathhouses. You’ll also have to know that “a planet has accidental dignity when it falls in an angular house”(p.7). Accidental dignity is not what happens when your WHO FARTED? baseball cap suddenly looks respectable because you’re standing next to someone in a CO-ED NAKED FIREFIGHTING tee shirt.

Would you recommend this book to Douglas Corrigan? Please. He had a chart and knew exactly where he was going when he gave the finger to U.S. aviation authorities on his gloriously crazy flight across the Atlantic.

Would you recommend this book to fans of Final Fantasy VII? I don’t know. When she writes that “this beginning point is paralleled by the alchemist’s prima materia—the cell is the physical beginning, the prima materia is the psychological beginning”(p.54), I can’t tell if she’s saying that alchemists should play more Final Fantasy, or saying that hardcore nerds should spend more time studying alchemy.

What was interesting about this book? The wide range of careers that are discussed as potential life purposes. If Uranus is in your fifth house, “you are often able to see into the behavior of others and may work well with psychologists and psychiatrists, researchers of all kinds, sports figures, and even travel agents,” while Pluto in your fifth house means that “water treatment, weather forecasting, and animal control workers may attract your eye in some way, as well as psychics, alchemists, and social welfare advocates”(p.32), to name a few.

This book was written by: Phillip H. Krapf, a journalist with 25 years of experience including work for the L.A. Times. Mr. Krapf is also “an abductee with a story to tell”(p.190), and “was actually recruited to write and speak on behalf of this alien species, to act as their designated reporter and spokesman regarding their efforts to establish diplomatic relations with the human race”(p.xi)

What is in this book: Updated information. Mr. Krapf was contacted by a group of aliens called the Verdants and wrote about it in two books, The Contact Has Begun and The Challenge of Contact, issuing a press release on August 23, 2001, declaring that the Verdants would “proceed with efforts to attempt to establish Verdant-Human diplomatic relations”(p.156). SPOILER ALERT: They didn’t.Although Mr. Krapf was able “to schedule a keynote talk at a major UFO conference” to give further details of the Verdants and their plan, “and this speech was to be delivered on September 16[, 2001]”(p.ix), Mr. Krapf was notified by the Verdants on September 11, 2001, that “They had been observing what they called ‘the regrettable scenes of carnage occurring on your planet’ and had come to the inescapable conclusion that ‘the human species is not yet ready’”(p.139). This was a profound disappointment for Mr. Krapf not only because humanity had missed out on an incredible opportunity, but also because “I was going to be vindicated, and all of my carping critics would have to eat crow after dumping on me for several years”(p.145).This second edition of Mr. Krapf’s book reviews his past history with the Verdants and discusses his “latest contact with these extraterrestrials, and provides an update as of June 2002 regarding their roller-coaster attempts to link up with humankind”(p.xi).

What is not in this book: Sizzling hot alien porn. During his extraterrestrial encounters, Mr. Krapf encounters an alien who is exceedingly interested in matters of Earthly sexuality. Although Mr. Kraft demurely tried to change the subject, “she had persisted, and eventually exposed her naked body to me and suggested a sexual encounter, which I immediately spurned”(p.30).However, the book does contain an alien probing, along with a discussion of “the effect of the probe as it penetrated and then transcended the memory banks of my current existence”(p.112).

Would you recommend this book to Marty McFly? Yes. He would contact the Verdants if I challenged him to do it and then called him a chicken.

Would you recommend this book to a terrorist? Absolutely. Maybe when they realize how much they’ve really cost us—all of us, not just the Americans—they’d think twice before embarking on a course of senseless violence.

What was interesting about this book? Although Mr. Krapf has voyaged beyond Earth’s atmosphere and come to terms with the alien Verdants and their culture, he still retains his strong sense of justice and his rapier-sharp wit. As an example, he recounts his reaction to “a joke with racial overtones,” on p.184-185:

He grinned at me after finishing his story, and I simply stared stone-faced at him in astonishment.“My God,” I said, “Do they still tell that story in Bakersfield?”